Steve

“Democracy is a stupid idea anyway!”
“We agree. It’s demagogue-prone. That’s a disease to which electoral systems are vulnerable. Yet demagogues are easy to identify. They gesture a lot and speak with pulpit rhythms, using words that ring of religious fervor and god-fearing sincerity. Sincerity with nothing behind it takes so much practice, Dama. The practice can always be detected.”
"By Truthsayers?"
"By anyone who learns the signs: Repetition. Great attempts to keep your attention on words. You must pay no attention to words. Watch what the person does. That way you learn the motives.”
― Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse: Dune

“All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.”
― Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse: Dune

“Whichever way it happened, the Neanderthals (and the other human species) pose one of history’s great what ifs. Imagine how things might have turned out had the Neanderthals or Denisovans survived alongside Homo sapiens. What kind of cultures, societies and political structures would have emerged in a world where several different human species coexisted? How, for example, would religious faiths have unfolded? Would the book of Genesis have declared that Neanderthals descend from Adam and Eve, would Jesus have died for the sins of the Denisovans, and would the Qur’an have reserved seats in heaven for all righteous humans, whatever their species? Would Neanderthals have been able to serve in the Roman legions, or in the sprawling bureaucracy of imperial China? Would the American Declaration of Independence hold as a self-evident truth that all members of the genus Homo are created equal? Would Karl Marx have urged workers of all species to unite?”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

“How tempting it is to raise high walls and keep out change. Rot here in our own self-satisfied comfort.”
― Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse: Dune